Xi'an City Wall

Climb the wide stone ramp, and the whole city seems to open up around you. Under your feet is a wall so broad that several people could easily walk along it side by side. It runs straight ahead for a long way, then turns a sharp corner, framing the old center of Xi'an inside one great rectangle. The wind up here moves freely, with almost nothing to block it.

This is the Xi'an City Wall. It is one of the most complete old city walls left anywhere in China. Many ancient walls in other cities have slowly crumbled away over the years, or were pulled down to make room for new roads and buildings. This one survived all of that. It still forms a full, unbroken loop right around the historic heart of the city.

The wall you are standing on was built in the early Ming dynasty, beginning around 1370. But it does not start from nothing. It rests on much older foundations buried below. Beneath your feet lie the remains of the imperial city of the Tang dynasty, from several centuries before that. You are walking on top of layer upon layer of the city's past.

The numbers here are large, and worth pausing on. The wall runs for about fourteen kilometers all the way around the city. It stands roughly twelve meters high, taller than several houses stacked one on another. And at its base it is even wider than it is at the top, sloping gently inward as it rises. That thick, heavy base is one reason it has stood so long.

Walk to the outer side and look down past the edge. A wide moat of water rings the entire wall on the outside. Long ago, this water and the high stone worked together as a single defense. An attacking enemy would first have to cross the open moat, fully exposed, before they could even reach the foot of the wall and begin the hard climb upward.

There are four main gates, one set into each side of the rectangle: east, west, south, and north. Each gate is far more than a simple door. It is really a small fortress in itself, with several towers and a closed inner courtyard between them. Any attackers who managed to break through the first gate would suddenly find themselves trapped in that courtyard, surrounded on every side.

As you walk along the top, notice the low, teeth-shaped barrier running along the outer edge. Soldiers once stood behind these stone teeth, watching the plain below and sheltering their bodies from incoming arrows. At regular distances, larger platforms push outward from the wall, so that guards could look back along the face of the wall and defend it from the side as well.

One of the best ways to take in the full size of the wall is by bicycle. You can rent one at the top, near the south gate, for a set period of time. Riding the entire loop takes well over an hour at an easy, steady pace. The path along the top is flat, broad, and completely open to the sky, with the city falling away on both sides.

From up here you can really see two different cities at the same time. Inside the wall lie the older streets, with temples, narrow lanes, and low gray rooftops pressed together. Beyond the wall rise the tall glass towers of the modern city, crowding the far horizon. The wall itself draws a clear, hard line between the old world and the new one.

In the evening, rows of red lanterns light up along the gates and the corner towers. The south gate in particular glows warmly after dark, its color reflected in the still water of the moat below. This gate is often used today for ceremonies and for welcoming important guests, much in the way a grand main entrance would have been used in centuries past.

Try, as you walk, to imagine the wall doing its real and original work. Picture guards on patrol through the long night. Heavy wooden gates swinging slowly closed at dusk. Signals and warnings passing quickly from one tower to the next along the top. For hundreds of years, this single barrier decided who was allowed to enter the city, and who had to remain outside.

As you finally come back down the ramp toward the street, turn around and look up once more at the great height of the stone above you. It has stood here for more than six hundred years. The city has changed almost completely in that time, growing far beyond these walls in every direction, and yet the wall still holds its old shape, quiet, patient, and firm.